SATURDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2026 · MORNING EDITION

THE WORLD NEWSREEL

 

THE WORLD NEWSREEL

OUR ENQUIRY | October 21, 2026

THE UNSEEN HAND?

From Paris to Milan: the disturbances, the digital networks, and the suspicion of hybrid warfare.

Two days ago, we raised a question. Yesterday, Italy's Minister of Defence gave that question a name.

On October 19, The World Newsreel suggested that the remarkable succession of disturbances in Paris and Milan might deserve examination through the increasingly important concept of hybrid warfare.

We did not claim to have discovered a conspiracy. We suggested that the similarities, the speed of mobilisation, and the international circumstances justified asking whether these apparently spontaneous events were entirely spontaneous.

Yesterday, October 20, Guido Crosetto, Italy's Minister of Defence, speaking at the Defence Procurement Forum in Rome, described the recent violence in Milan as the result of what he called “hybrid warfare”, conducted through unconventional instruments including TikTok, YouTube and other social media platforms.

The Minister went further. He argued that young Europeans were undergoing a kind of counter-education outside the traditional institutions of family and school, absorbing attitudes increasingly hostile to the democratic societies in which they live.

Mr Crosetto's declaration does not establish that a foreign power organised the riots. But it brings into public discussion a question which can no longer be dismissed as mere speculation.

And since yesterday, the evidence under examination has become more interesting.

THE FIRST CLUE: A LEAFLET

The disturbances in Milan on October 17 were followed by reports of extensive damage, looting, confrontations with the police and numerous arrests. Similar scenes had occurred in France, particularly in Paris and other major cities.

Yet the most interesting object in the Italian investigation may not be a stone, a barricade or a broken shop window.

It may be a digital leaflet.

According to reporting published by la Repubblica on October 19 and 20, investigators are attempting to reconstruct the original circulation of the message which summoned young people to the streets.

Its graphic design reportedly bears a striking resemblance to the material used in the French mobilisations.

The Corriere della Sera, reporting on October 18, also identified the adoption of French-style mobilisation methods: Telegram groups, social networks, and promotional images reportedly generated with artificial intelligence.

These are significant observations. They are not, by themselves, proof of a common command.

Political movements have always borrowed images, slogans and tactics from one another. What matters is whether investigators can establish a connection between the accounts which originated the messages and the networks which distributed them.

THE SECOND CLUE: THE INVISIBLE MOBILISATION

The more serious question concerns the mechanism by which a message becomes a crowd.

Investigators are studying the first accounts to circulate the calls for demonstrations, the subsequent chains of distribution, and the speed with which certain messages reached unusually large audiences.

According to la Repubblica on October 21, preliminary intelligence analysis has focused on the possibility that digital amplification directed mobilisation messages towards users already receptive to anger, confrontation and revolt.

Bots, recommendation algorithms and networks of accounts may have played a role. Whether their activity involved deliberate external manipulation remains under investigation.

This distinction is essential.

An algorithm can amplify public anger without receiving instructions from a foreign intelligence service. A digital campaign can be coordinated domestically. And a genuine social grievance can be exploited by outside actors without having been invented by them.

The object of the enquiry, therefore, is not simply to discover whether somebody organised a demonstration.

It is to establish whether somebody deliberately manipulated its scale, its audience or its direction.

THE THIRD CLUE: THE GEOGRAPHY OF DISORDER

France, Albania and Italy have experienced successive episodes of unrest. Their circumstances differ, but the methods of mobilisation have attracted the attention of investigators.

In France, demonstrations have drawn upon longstanding grievances concerning living costs, public services and political representation.

In Italy, social discontent and the mobilisation of young people have intersected with the activities of groups whose political affiliations are not always easily identifiable.

There is no reason to deny the reality of these grievances.

Indeed, their reality is precisely what could make them useful to an external operator.

Hybrid warfare does not necessarily require the invention of discontent. Its purpose may be to identify existing tensions, intensify them, and direct their political consequences.

A crowd does not have to know that it is being manipulated for manipulation to occur.

Nor, however, does the existence of a crowd establish that manipulation has occurred.

The distinction is the difference between intelligence analysis and political mythology.

THE LARGER WAR

These events unfold against a European security environment already preoccupied with hybrid threats.

On October 15 and 16, NATO representatives, allies and partners met in Bucharest to examine hostile hybrid activities, including sabotage, cyber operations and attacks against critical infrastructure.

The European Union has also established measures against foreign information manipulation and interference, particularly activities attributed to Russia.

The strategic circumstances are plain enough.

The war in Ukraine continues. European governments face difficult choices concerning defence expenditure, economic pressure, energy security and military assistance to Kyiv. Domestic political divisions threaten to complicate collective decisions.

A foreign power wishing to weaken European cohesion would have an evident strategic interest in aggravating those divisions.

But an interest is not evidence of an operation.

Russia has been accused by European institutions of conducting hybrid campaigns against European states. That established geopolitical dispute makes the present allegations worthy of investigation. It does not establish Russian responsibility for the disturbances in Milan or Paris.

Other explanations remain possible, including domestic political mobilisation, criminal opportunism, social contagion and the independent amplification of sensational material by commercial platforms.

The investigators must distinguish among them.

THE POLITICAL QUESTION

There is also a danger on the other side.

A government which describes every violent demonstration as foreign interference risks confusing a problem of national security with the ordinary difficulties of democratic government.

The right to demonstrate is not an instrument of hybrid warfare merely because a demonstration embarrasses a government. Nor does the use of social media transform political dissent into an enemy operation.

The relevant questions are narrower and more demanding.

Who originated the calls for mobilisation? Who amplified them? Were apparently independent accounts acting in concert? Was the distribution of messages artificially manipulated? And can any such activity be traced to identifiable organisations or foreign interests?

Italian intelligence is reportedly examining these questions. The political conclusions must await the evidence.

OUR COMMENT

Two days ago, we asked whether the events unfolding in European streets might form part of something larger than the disturbances themselves.

Yesterday, the Italian Minister of Defence publicly advanced the hypothesis of hybrid warfare.

Today, reports of intelligence enquiries into digital mobilisation give that hypothesis a more precise object.

There is a difference between asking the right question and possessing the right answer.

We claim the former. We do not yet claim the latter.

The twentieth century accustomed us to imagine political subversion in terms of clandestine meetings, secret instructions and money crossing borders.

The twenty-first century may require us to look elsewhere: at the origin of a message, the architecture of its distribution, the selection of an audience, and the almost instantaneous transformation of individual resentment into collective action.

Or we may discover that the machinery of social media, combined with genuine grievances, can produce remarkably similar results without a foreign director.

Both possibilities deserve investigation.

For now, many are looking for the truth.

So are we.

And the truth will not be established by the volume of the accusations, but by the quality of the evidence.

Good night, and good luck.

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SOURCES & DOCUMENTATION

• RaiNews, October 20 — Guido Crosetto's statement on hybrid warfare

• ANSA English, October 20 — Defence Minister's remarks

• Corriere della Sera, October 18 — French-style mobilisation and digital imagery

• la Repubblica Europe, October 20 — Investigation into the origins of the mobilisation

• la Repubblica, October 21 — Intelligence enquiries into bots and algorithms

• Corriere della Sera, October 21 — Government suspicions and political disagreements

• NATO, October 19 — Allied discussions on Russian hybrid activities

• European External Action Service — Countering hybrid threats